Ballroom Costume- The Beginning

My original purpose in creating this blog was to provide a forum on which to talk about the process as I attempt to make a ballroom dance costume from scratch. If you've never seen Dancing with the Stars or any other ballroom events, you probably have no idea what it is I am getting myself into. Here are some pictures of ballroom dresses to demonstrate:



These are just some typical examples, they can vary widely in color, style, and materials. I've been very excited about making this dress for quite a while as some of my dancer friends know as they have been hearing about it for some time. After many weeks of time spent searching online for dresses for inspiration, patterns, and any other helpful information I could glean, I have finally settled on a design.

After coming across this:
 
design, I knew it was what I wanted.

I want to say now that I am not an experienced seamstress. I've sewn a number of small things, pillows, stuffed animals, some clothes, but nothing on this scale. Everything I have made either came with a clear cut pattern or was simple enough not to need one. Not so for this dress. I will be making the pattern from scratch,  doing my best to interpret the dress. I don't intend to make this exact dress, I don't think it would turn out exactly like that anyway, but I used it for inspiration. My dress will (hopefully, and a big emphasis on that) be something like this:

those are rhinestones rather than sequins like in the gold dress

I haven't decided what to do about floats yet, but those are a ways off.

The first step will be to make a mock up of the base pattern in some cheap muslin so that I can adjust it for fit and shape before using the good stuff (well, before I buy the good stuff even, I need to know how much I will need.) Unfortunately, to do that I need a dress form which I don't have at the moment. I'm going to be making my own using plaster just as soon as the plaster cloth arrives in mail, hopefully it will be soon!